Updated November 14, 2018

Welcome to the latest edition of road.cc’s buyer's guide to winter
tubeless tyres in which you’ll find everything you need to know to find
the right winter tubeless tyres for you, plus our pick of 8 of the best
winter tubeless tyres.

With winter nearly upon us, and spurred by this forum
discussion, it’s a good time to take a look at the current tubeless
options for the winter. Swapping lightweight race tyres for sturdier
rubber is a sensible idea for riding through the winter, with extra
puncture protection and tread compounds designed to provide more traction
in the wet. With the rise in popularity of tubeless, there's a growing
choice of winter-specific tubeless tyres, we've rounded up eight for your
consideration below.

Why tubeless?

Let’s get the why bit out of the way first, just in case you’re not
already a fan. Almost zero punctures being the biggest advantage over a
regular inner tube clincher setup, and nowhere is that more of a benefit
than during winter riding. Okay, so the installation can sometimes be a
tricky old mess, but it’s getting easier all the tyre with better tyres,
rims, tubeless kits and pumps. This guide below takes you through the
tubeless installation steps and shows it doesn't need to be all that
difficult.

I’ll happily admit to being a road tubeless convert. My personal tubeless
epiphany came during one cold and wet winter ride many years ago. Riding
along a busy road the rear tyre suddenly burst a leak. Fortunately, the
sealant in the tyre quickly plugged the hole (and thanks to mudguards I
was suitably protected from a stripe of gunk up my back) and the escaping
air quickly stopped with only a small pressure drop. Importantly, I didn’t
need to stop while this incident occurred and continued the ride.

What are your options?

Despite the clear advantages of tubeless tyres, the choice is still
somewhat limited, though it does get a bit better every year. There’s
still a reluctance from some tyre brands to go near it, while others have
fully embraced it, willing to invest in the technology to make it a viable
alternative to regular clinchers.

What do you want from a winter road tyre? You want extra durability
compared to a summer race tyre, with a carcass and tread that is more
resistance to the debris that can litter wet roads during the winter
months. You might want a bit of extra width, provided your bike has
clearance, for additional comfort and the benefit of lower pressures.
Tread materials for winter tyres are often modified to provide better
traction when the going it slippery.

Nine tubeless winter tyre options

Ritchey has gone inverse with the tread on its Alpine JB WCS Stronghold
tyres to create a tyre that grips on light gravel and rough sections of
broken country lane while also offering a smooth ride if you want to get a
shift on on the tarmac. A very impressive all-round tyre choice indeed.

You'll need room in your frame for 35mm tyres to fit the tubeless version
of the Alpine JB WCS Stronghold, as the 30mm version is only available
with a conventional casing.

IRC might not be the most familiar tyre brand in the road bike market at
the moment, but its Formula Pro Tubeless X-Guard road tyres offer
exceptionally good performance, with easy tubeless installation and great
durability. The price does put them at the top end of the tyre market,
though.

Traction is impressive, too, whether in the dry or wet, but it's the
latter where they IRC tyres pull ahead of the latest generation Schwalbes.
The IRCs feel more predictable and planted in the wet, and handle fast
corners superbly.

Most of the Bontrager wheels are now tubeless-ready, and to complement
them the company has started adding tubeless tyres to its range, and there
are now quite a few to pick from. The R3 Hard-Case Lite TLR is its
flagship road tubeless offering and is designed to be durable thanks to a
butyl liner providing the reliability you want and need in the winter.
It’s available in 24 and 26mm width options.

If you crave more width, the cheaper A2 Hard-Case Lite TLR tyre is
offered in extra 28 and 32mm width options, and if your bike has space for
them, those are probably the ones to pick for winter riding.

The Roubaix Tubeless tyre from Specialized is pitched as an all-rounder
and we reckon it has all the right ingredients for a reliable winter
cycling tyre. Of course, we haven't tested it yet but that's something
we'll be aiming to address very soon. Why we think the tyre will be good
for winter cycling is because it uses the company’s Gripton compound,
which we’ve found to be very grippy in a range of conditions, dry and wet,
with shoulder sipes to increase traction through the corners. It features
a 180 TPI casing with an Endurant flat protection and comes in 25mm width,
weighing a claimed 295g.

The Fusion 5 is a brand new tyre from the French company that pioneered
Road Tubeless many years ago, and with three models to choose from the All
Season 11Storm looks the ideal choice for surviving a winter of cycling.

road.cc has tested the Performance
version of this tyre.
We were highly impressed with the ease of tubeless installation, traction,
rolling resistance and durability. The All Season version has a specific
tread pattern designed to improve wet cycling performance and has Kevlar
reinforcement to prevent punctures.

The new tyre is available in 25 and 28mm widths and weighs a claimed 325g
for the former.

The new Zipp Tangente RT tyre, available in 25 and 28mm widths, isn’t
expressly designed as a winter tyre but tubeless goes a long way to
reducing flats and the company has added a “water-siping tread pattern” to
these new tyres, though there is evidence to suggest such grooves on a
road bike tyre are largely pointless.

Further boosting their puncture resistance is a polyamide layer under the
tread. The tyres are reasonably light, 292g claimed for the 25mm tyre and
302g for the 28mm version.

Not all bikes are going to have space for 30mm wide tyres, but if your
bike does, these new Yksion Elite Allroad tyres from wheel specialist
Mavic look like being a good option thanks to the tubeless-ready
construction and bead-to-bead polyamide casing reinforcement.

The tyres also have a tread pattern designed to ramp up traction in
adverse conditions, with side grooves for extra cornering grip on dirt and
loose surface roads, while the centre section is smooth for fast rolling
on the hard stuff.

Not so much a winter tyre as an adventure and gravel tyre, but we’ve been
impressed with the rolling speed of this dimpled tyre on the road, and if
the roads are covered in mud thanks to local farmers then they do offer a
compelling benefit over narrower slicks.

Once you're off the good roads and onto the average ones – and we have
plenty of them around here – any conceivable difference in rolling speed
is easily outweighed by the comfort of the big air chamber, and the fact
that you don't have to ease off and pick your line: just batter on
through. I've not managed to put a hole in them that the sealant hasn't
immediately coped with. Plus you can take them off-road as well, and
they’re right at home on the canal towpaths, bridleways and trails like
the South Downs Way.

There's now a road version of the G-One Allround pictured and reviewed
above, called the G-One Speed. It comes in a narrower 30mm width with
V-Guard protection that could be a good choice for more road-based riding,
providing your frame has space for them.

Throwing a bit of a curve ball into the short list here, the fat WTB
Horizon is another possible contender. Granted, it won’t fit all bikes and
it might require a new set of wheels, but if it fits this is a durable,
grippy, comfortable and fast rolling tyre that might, as the name
suggests, open up new horizons…

It’s a 47mm wide tyre which is simply massive compared to everything else
in this article, but on a 650b wheel (an old French standard resurrected
by the mountain bike industry) the outside diameter is roughly the same as
a regular 700c wheelset.

The tread pattern is mostly slick save for a few grooves and chevrons on
the shoulders, and the grip is impressive in the wet. They instil bags of
confidence on treacherous roads covered in water, mud or wet leaves.

About road.cc Buyer's Guides

The aim of road.cc buyer's guides is to give you the most, authoritative, objective and up-to-date buying advice. We continuously update and republish our guides, checking prices, availability and looking for the best deals.

Our guides include links to websites where you can buy the featured products. Like most sites we make a small amount of money if you buy something after clicking on one of those links. We want you to be happy with what you buy, so we only include a product in a if we think it's one of the best of its kind.

As far as possible that means recommending equipment that we have actually reviewed, but we also include products that are popular, highly-regarded benchmarks in their categories.

David has worked on the road.cc tech team since July 2012. Previously he was editor of Bikemagic.com and before that staff writer at RCUK. He's a seasoned cyclist of all disciplines, from road to mountain biking, touring to cyclo-cross, he only wishes he had time to ride them all. He's mildly competitive, though he'll never admit it, and is a frequent road racer but is too lazy to do really well. He currently resides in the Cotswolds.

25 comments

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bobbypuk[64 posts]1 year ago

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I've been running the G-one speed for a couple of months now. They are fast but have really worn. After about 3000km they're not very dimpled anymore. Which is good as they roll even faster now.

I'd be more concerned about getting a flat in winter, with 5 miles to go to work and 5 miles to go back home, with a tubeless tyre which doesn't seal .

What do you do then? Is it a case of a very long walk in freezing conditions? I'm much more comfortable with the idea of quickly popping a new tube in, inflating it with a CO2 canister & getting back on my way.

I'd need a heck of a lot more convincing that this latest fad is going to involve a lot less hassle than my current (puncture-free for almost 3 years of 20 mile-a-day commuting) tubed setup! Can someone who runs tubeless and who may have experienced a non-sealing puncture let me know how they dealt with it?

If it punctures and the sealant doesn't do the job, you can always put an inner tube in there as an emergency get-me-home measure. So it's no different to changing a tube, but there's a pretty good chance you won't need to do it unless it's a really big cut in the tyre.

I have the Schwalbe G-One's, and the rear is really worn. They're less than a year old - they're very supple and I think they're better for mostly gravel riding, the tarmac really seems to wear them down.

I run g-one speed tubeless and over about 3500 miles on road, stony Scottish glen paths and sandy Norfolk off road have had inumerable punctures. Each time I've lost 10-20psi and it's sealed itself, I just pump it up and carry on. About ready for a new rear one now.

Hasn't happened yet, but for a big hole I carry a tubeless repair kit (widely available and stupidly small and light). Anything an anchovy can't fix will be so big a tube would balloon through and last about 5 mins.

As for it being a fad, when was the last time you saw any other type of 'carriage' using tubes? Seems to me we're finally catching up with other road (and off-road) users.

I have used a tube recently though, to cushion my tent pole against the frame when bikepacking!

I'd be more concerned about getting a flat in winter, with 5 miles to go to work and 5 miles to go back home, with a tubeless tyre which doesn't seal .

What do you do then? Is it a case of a very long walk in freezing conditions? I'm much more comfortable with the idea of quickly popping a new tube in, inflating it with a CO2 canister & getting back on my way.

I'd need a heck of a lot more convincing that this latest fad is going to involve a lot less hassle than my current (puncture-free for almost 3 years of 20 mile-a-day commuting) tubed setup! Can someone who runs tubeless and who may have experienced a non-sealing puncture let me know how they dealt with it?

I had a 2cm cut in a Schwalbe Pro-One that wouldn't seal, but as I was just 2 miles from home, I walked and fixed it there. Otherwise, I could have shoved something (a fiver or a bit of paper) to cover the hole and pop in an inner tube, so at their worst, they're the same as non-tubeless. That's the only puncture that I've got (or noticed) so far.

I've not had a true non seal failure. My MTB got a 1 cm flint hole which deflated to 10psi but still rideable. My other experience is with my tubs, so not tubeless. They got a small hole at some point riding around the IOW. I only noticed the small weep of sealant at the ferry crossing. No loss of pressure I could detect.

Most tubeless punctures relate to slow going down or slight loss of pressure which you only find out when you've got back home. There is no chance of pinch flats on tubeless.

I'd be more concerned about getting a flat in winter, with 5 miles to go to work and 5 miles to go back home, with a tubeless tyre which doesn't seal .

What do you do then? Is it a case of a very long walk in freezing conditions? I'm much more comfortable with the idea of quickly popping a new tube in, inflating it with a CO2 canister & getting back on my way.

I'd need a heck of a lot more convincing that this latest fad is going to involve a lot less hassle than my current (puncture-free for almost 3 years of 20 mile-a-day commuting) tubed setup! Can someone who runs tubeless and who may have experienced a non-sealing puncture let me know how they dealt with it?

Use a "Noodle" or "Anchovy". I've had to do this a few times, in the day and in the dark and wet (my commute route is often strewn with glass). It takes practice but once you have the hang of it it means repairing the tyre at the side of the road in the same time if not quicker than putting a tube in. I've not once had to fit an innertube in the 2 years I've been riding tubeless. Beauty of fitting a noodle is no removing wheels, tyres or messing with chains etc.

Anything an anchovy can't fix will be so big a tube would balloon through and last about 5 mins.

I carry a piece cut from an old plastic toothpaste tube for that.

Good idea. Even in the middle of nowhere there's plenty of crap chucked out of cars to use in the verges, water bottles, KFC buckets, etc. Bit of toothpaste tube would be virtually weightless but getting creative with the shite drivers 'bin' out of the window would be quite satisfying.

I'd be more concerned about getting a flat in winter, with 5 miles to go to work and 5 miles to go back home, with a tubeless tyre which doesn't seal .

What do you do then? Is it a case of a very long walk in freezing conditions? I'm much more comfortable with the idea of quickly popping a new tube in, inflating it with a CO2 canister & getting back on my way.

I'd need a heck of a lot more convincing that this latest fad is going to involve a lot less hassle than my current (puncture-free for almost 3 years of 20 mile-a-day commuting) tubed setup! Can someone who runs tubeless and who may have experienced a non-sealing puncture let me know how they dealt with it?

I'd be more concerned about getting a flat in winter, with 5 miles to go to work and 5 miles to go back home, with a tubeless tyre which doesn't seal .

What do you do then? Is it a case of a very long walk in freezing conditions? I'm much more comfortable with the idea of quickly popping a new tube in, inflating it with a CO2 canister & getting back on my way.

I'd need a heck of a lot more convincing that this latest fad is going to involve a lot less hassle than my current (puncture-free for almost 3 years of 20 mile-a-day commuting) tubed setup! Can someone who runs tubeless and who may have experienced a non-sealing puncture let me know how they dealt with it?

Yeh. I put a tube in it. Easy as.

Ditto, put a tube in. Just don't forget to check all the inside of the tyre for thorns/flints/etc. Ripped a slit in a tubeless mtb tyre a few years ago that wouldn't seal. Tube lasted about half mile: there were 7 thorns through the tyre that had sealed previously.

Anyone using Hutchinson sector 28s? My pro ones are 8 months old on my commuter, have a few noodles in but still going strong. 60-100 miles a week plus the odd long ride too.

I've been running sector 28s for the last 2 years and whilst they were a really nice ride, they're quite weak on the side walls and i've had a couple of cuts.

i've switched to IRC (courtesy of the cycle clinic) for the winter - they do seem a lot tougher and whilst they dont ride quite so smoothly, i suspect they'll be more reliable over the detritus covered winter roads of east sussex.

Had a sector 28 on the rear since November as I properly killed my pro one off roading. Patched up the pro one with plastic and a tube rode another 40 miles and a few more times without an issue. Fitted the sector 28 on the rear no snags so far. The pro one on the front still going strong after a year.

I've been running a set of Hutchinson fusion pros over the spring and summer and based on the experience, there's no way I'd trust them over the winter commute. Far too many puctures and the doc blue sealant has been pretty hit and miss regarding sealing the hole. I've got anchovies as a backup, but more often than not it's only a temporary fix and I've had to patch the hole from the inside, which is far more of a faff than fitting a new inner tube when you factor in the mess and having to clean the tyre and go through the resealing process. Im not ruling out tubeless just yet, but until there's a tubeless 25-28mm Road tyre with gatorskin/durano levels of puncture protection I'm not going to take the chance over the winter. There doesn't seem to be anything like that in the market as the manufacturers seem to think that the self sealing properties of tubeless/sealant mean that there's no need for it.

Im not ruling out tubeless just yet, but until there's a tubeless 25-28mm Road tyre with gatorskin/durano levels of puncture protection I'm not going to take the chance over the winter.

Well, if you want to be very conservative, Schwalbe does a tubeless version of the Marathon, although at the moment only in fairly wide versions. I have been running Hutchinson Sector through all kinds of weather on commute as well as long distance for nearly 2 years now. Plenty of occasions where I only noticed an issue because sealant was briefly spraying about. Never been totally stranded, only once had to pump a tyre up mid ride as it was a bit low after sealing.

I got them on my Zipps, a pair of Pacenti SL25s and a DT Swiss 421 rim. Went on with just a track pump on the DT Swiss rim, had to use an Airshot for the other rims but all doable. I am staying on tubeless, based on my experience it enables me to carry on no matter what the road throws at my wheels.

Might find it useful if you are reading this - sceptical but positive thoughts on tubeless systems

In the review, one winter tyre they didn't mention is the Vittoria Adventure. These are maybe a bit wide (fit fine on my Genesis Datum), heavy but roll well, nice tread and super hard wearing. Planet-X were doing them very very cheap

I've been running the Schwable S1 (now known as the G1 Speed) tyres for a couple of years now. They don't wear well, the casing is clearly worn after less km than I'd expect. But they are super grippy/fast/comfy

A lot of people I know rate the Hutchinson Sector 32. I have some Specialized Roubaix 2bliss to try out next